The house shook with 60 mph wind gusts.

I felt the whole place rattle and wondered what we were going to do. The previous day, Saturday, had provided drenching rain. Now the rain had stopped, but the atmosphere had developed terrible sneezing fits instead.

April 18th and 19th, 2015 were part of National Park Week; admission to National Parks and Monuments was provided free-of-charge those two weekend days.

Great! I had figured earlier in the week that we could just whistle over to the Badlands to do some hiking there and have a random picnic.

However, visions of clawing desperately at the crumbly slopes of the Badlands to the echoes of fading shrieks and thuds while getting blown off a barren hoodoo didn’t sound overly appealing to either myself or the kids.

I checked the weather and discovered that there was no wind advisory at Devil’s Tower, a little further to the west. I also figured that the large boulders and pines of Devil’s Tower would probably make a pretty good wind-block, whereas there is nothing in the Badlands landscape to provide that, so we decided to switch up plans a little and head west instead of east!

After fixing a thermos of coffee and packing some other drinks, we piled into Hhrbie and headed out. We made a slight detour to the Green Bean, a coffee-house in Spearfish, SD, to grab some sandwiches to take with us. We’d never been there before. I thought a chicken salad sandwich on a croissant sounded pretty good.

“Umm, we’re actually out of the chicken salad.”

DAMMIT! My luck had struck again! I stood at the counter a few moments, thinking and hoping the delay would cause some original chicken salad to magically materialize – you know, like opening your fridge every few minutes in hopes that the contents will be different than the last time you looked? Unfortunately that didn’t work.

So, after much hemming and hawing, I finally reluctantly opted for something called the Uptown Cowgirl which was a modified chicken salad containing grapes and walnuts, but also on a croissant. I did not have high hopes for this sandwich!

We arrived at Devil’s Tower. Deciding we were hungry, we opted to eat half of our sandwiches then go for a hike. It’s probably a mile to a mile-and-a-half around the tower if you use the main trail.

I eyed my Uptown Cowgirl suspiciously, packed neatly in a box with chips and a pickle. It lay there in all of it’s grape-and-walnut glory on it’s croissant, topped with cucumbers and sprouts. I braced myself and took a bite.

Holy <bleep>!

Figuring it was a fluke, I took another bite!

It was delicious! I don’t know if they slipped crack in it or what they did, but that was the best-tasting-sandwich I’d had in a long time. My youngest adventurer, Magicwolfcub, reported the same. She had a different sandwich, but due to old age, I just can’t remember the name of it.

Off we then wandered to hike around. You can come along with us virtually: